


Waiting to Exhale

by queermccoy



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti)
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Bisexual Bill Denbrough, Canonical Character Death, Coming Out, Gay Mike Hanlon, Gay Richie Tozier, Internalized Homophobia, It Gets Worse Before It Gets Better, Lesbian Beverly Marsh, M/M, Pansexual Ben Hanscom, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-27
Updated: 2020-01-27
Packaged: 2021-02-27 03:35:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,446
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22430428
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/queermccoy/pseuds/queermccoy
Summary: When all is said and done, Bill leaves first.“I’m sorry,” he says, sucking in a breath. “My wife… I have to get home.”Richie understands why, he gets that Big Bill has a life and he finally, finally, gets to go live it. They all do. Most of them do, anyway. Him and Bill and Mike, Bev and Ben. They get to go on and become who they were meant to be, who they could have been without the clown.Stan doesn’t. Eddie… Eddie doesn’t either.“I have to get home,” he says again.
Relationships: Ben Hanscom/Richie Tozier
Comments: 12
Kudos: 72





	Waiting to Exhale

**Author's Note:**

> Happy Trashstack Weekend, ya'll!

When all is said and done, Bill leaves first. 

“I’m sorry,” he says, sucking in a breath. “My wife… I have to get home.” 

Richie understands why, he gets that Big Bill has a life and he finally, finally, gets to go live it. They all do. Most of them do, anyway. Him and Bill and Mike, Bev and Ben. They get to go on and become who they were meant to be, who they could have been without the clown. 

Stan doesn’t. Eddie… Eddie doesn’t either. 

“I have to get home,” he says again. He touches Richie’s shoulder and when they hug goodbye, somehow Bill envelopes his larger frame in the crushing circle of his arms. He feels safe and loved and it steals the breath from his lungs, brings tears to his eyes. 

“Keep in touch,” Mike tells him. It isn’t a request. It’s hope. He’s the first to leave because he has a life, outside of them, the Losers, the way Ben and Bev and Richie and Mike just… don’t, and they need him to tell them that he remembers. 

Bill nods, solemn, and pulls Mike in for a hug. He hugs Ben and Bev and then he leaves. 

The remaining four Losers sit on the floor in Mike’s attic apartment and wait for the texts, the calls, the smoke signals, whatever Bill decides to do to let them know that he remembers. Almost a full day after he leaves, Mike gets a FaceTime request and it’s Big Bill Denbrough, looking tired and miserable, but it’s him. 

They all make plans to leave the next day. 

Mike is going West. He isn’t sure where, but he demands that they all keep in touch. He doesn’t give notice at the library and he doesn’t pack up his apartment. He just… leaves. Richie is impressed, to be honest, at how quickly he ghosts the life he built for himself in the husk of a city he has never really left before. He’s so brave. They’re all so brave. 

Bev is going to leave too. She’s going to divorce her husband and take her company back. She tells Richie and Ben this over pancakes at a Denny’s. Ben is eating a fruit salad. Richie is having coffee with so much cream it looks like the nicotine stained walls of his parent’s house, the one he’s only just remembered was a part of his life for so long. He doesn’t drink it. 

Richie thought maybe Ben and Bev would leave together. They kissed at the quarry, he saw them even without his glasses on. They seemed so happy to have finally found each other. Winter fire and hearts burning and everything. This doesn’t seem to be the case at all. 

“I don’t think I-” Bev blinks, hard, and stares down at her pancakes soaked in cheap maple syrup. They’re in Maine and she’s eating plastic maple syrup. Even Richie knows it's a sin, but far be it for him to deny brave and bruised Bev anything she wants in this world. He loves her. 

They’re sitting in a booth near the back of the restaurant, the only people in their section, with Bev on one side and Richie and Ben sharing the other. She looks at them, and Richie admires the set of her jaw, the way she looks so effortless and strong in an old t-shirt and a ponytail held up with a rubber band she stole from their waitress. “I’m gay,” she says, breathing in hard. 

Ben must already know because he doesn’t seem devastated by the revelation. It must only be news to Richie, and he wonders what the kiss at the lake was for if Bev is gay. He doesn’t have to wonder too hard because he’s gay and he’s kissed several women, sometimes because he was lonely and emotional and felt loved. He doesn’t know too many people who deserve to feel love like Bev does. He can count all the living ones on one hand with a thumb left over. 

Richie realizes he hasn’t said anything for a while when Ben knocks their shoulders together and Bev raises her eyebrows at him. He sighs and says, “Same.” 

After breakfast, Ben goes for a run and Richie waits with Bev for him to return. 

** 

When Bev leaves, they go with her, Richie and Ben. They all drive to New York City together, returning their rental cars and picking up another with enough room for the three of them. 

“I didn’t forget,” Bev says. “That I’m… gay.” She’s driving, hands nestled into the space at the bottom of the wheel. Eddie would have thrown a fit, Richie is sure, to see her mishandle their vehicle like this. He gets misty-eyed, thinking about Eddie. It’s weird to remember that you love someone and then lose them in almost the same breath. 

“What happened?” He asks, because Ben is asleep in the back and can’t. Bev shrugs, but he knows her and he knows she’s pretending to be more serene about this than she really feels. He hasn’t heard her say ‘lesbian’ yet and understands because he can’t really say ‘gay’ either. 

“I think I always knew, but between the clown taking my memories and… my dad, I-” she waves her hand through the air like she’s clearing away cobwebs. “I feel responsible for the men in my life. Feel like I’m supposed to have one.”

“Bev,” Richie says, again because Ben is asleep in the back and can’t say it himself, “It’s not your fault, but it’s so fucking stupid.” 

He worries that he’s gone too far. He worries that she won’t understand that he means the world is stupid, not her or her feelings, but she laughs. “I know!” she says. She sounds like she really does, and Richie is glad for her. 

“He doesn’t make me feel like that though,” her tone has dropped low, like it’s a secret between she and Richie and for them alone. “He loves me,” her eyes flicker to Ben in the back, “And it’s okay that I don’t want to sleep with him. That’s never happened to me before.” 

Richie reaches out and touches her shoulder. “Please know, from the bottom of my heart, that I never wanted to fuck you and I still love you.” 

Bev laughs again, but this time it sounds waterlogged. She brushes at her eyes and her fingers come back wet. “I love you too,” she says. 

**

They get an apartment in New York, Bev, Ben, and Richie. Bev asks for their help with her divorce, their support, and Ben and Richie come through. Richie needs someone else to think about or he lays in bed and drinks all day. He misses Stan and Eddie and when he starts it’s hard to stop. 

One of the days he can’t stop, Bev is out of town so it’s okay. He’s five beers deep at noon. He doesn’t think, he just sits on the couch and stacks the bottles on the cushion next to him. When Ben walks in, he doesn’t say anything. He picks up Richie’s empties and gently drops them in their returnables bin. 

“Thanks, man,” Richie says and he’s not drunk-drunk but he’s definitely tipsy, watching daytime TV and thinking about the way Stan used to frown at him when he would say pretty much anything. “Do you want one?” He asks, gesturing at the unopened six-pack at his feet. Two in a day seems reasonable. 

“I’m not… really a drinker,” Ben says carefully. “Before Derry it’d been three years.” 

“Oh shit, are you in a program?” Richie asks, hiding his beer between his thighs, covering the neck with his hands like that will undo Ben having seen it in the first place. 

Ben nods and sits on the easy chair next to the couch. Bev and Ben designed their space, and it’s cozier than Richie would have expected with close and soft furniture, warm colored walls and a plush carpet. Richie told them that he loved it and he does. It feels bleak and cold in the wake of this confession.

“I’m sorry,” Richie says, his throat thick and his chest heavy. He isn’t sure what he’s apologizing for. “I’m sorry.” 

“It’s okay, you have nothing to be sorry for.” Ben assures him, reaching and laying a hand on Richie’s fingers, the ones hiding his bottle from view. 

Richie’s eyes water behind his glasses and he wishes Ben wasn’t looking at him. He wishes Ben had never seen him like this, drunk at noon. He’s out of work and sad and spends most of his day trying to make things easier for Bev and he isn’t really sure what he’s supposed to do with his hands when she’s gone. Eddie and Stan are still dead. He’s crying and Ben isn’t but he looks like he’s about to. 

“God, sorry,” he says again. He laughs, watery and shallow. He pulls his hands from under Ben’s because the touching is too much. It hurts his chest. 

“Hey,” Ben says, pulling his hands back into his own lap. “Don’t do that.” 

“Don’t do what?” 

“Dismiss how you feel. Whatever you feel right now, it belongs to you.” Ben tries to meet his eyes and Richie is so mystified by what he’s said that he lets him. It makes his head feel too full and extremely empty. 

They look at each other, and Richie feels dumb for never really seeing Ben as an adult, as a man. He is rigid and highly composed in a way that reeks of loneliness and heartbreak. He’s so quiet that Richie forgets that he’s hurting too. 

“I miss them,” Richie breathes and Ben nods again. Blinking, Richie reaches out and takes Ben’s hand. Their fingers are interlocked and Ben squeezes, hard. 

“I do too,” he says. 

Later on, when Ben has gone to bed and Richie is fully sober, he cracks open one of the bottles from his fresh, untouched six pack. He drinks it while he pours the rest down the sink. He finds the vodka he has stashed in his room and dumps that too. He finishes off the beer and puts the bottle in the recycling with the others. He takes them into the redemption center in the morning before Bev comes home. 

** 

Richie keeps expecting Bev or Ben to leave, to ask him to leave, but they don’t. The three of them are successful roommates, and Richie feels welcome even if he’s waiting for the other shoe to drop. 

Mike is visiting, and it’s been a year since Derry. Ben is FaceTiming Bill so it’s like he’s there with them, that they’re all together again, even if Bill is in London. 

Mike and Bev are drinking wine and Bill has a lager. Ben drinks water and Richie has a soda. 

“When are you going to start doing stand up again, Rich?” Bill asks and Bev shakes her head slightly. Ben’s shoulders tense. They know because they live with him, that he’s gay and that he doesn’t want to get back out there until he can say it out loud. He’s been so dishonest with himself and he doesn’t want to go back to that. Stan is dead and Eddie is dead and it took him a long time to come to the conclusion that it would do them and the children they all were, together, a disservice to keep pretending like it wasn’t eating him alive. 

“I’m not ready,” he tells Bill, not looking at Ben’s phone propped up on the kitchen table, in an empty space between Ben and Bev. Richie is on Ben’s other side and Mike is next to Bev. There’s an empty space between Mike and Richie and he feels it like an ache.

Ben touches Richie’s knee under the table. Richie links their fingers together and Ben squeezes. They do this now, hold hands sometimes, for support. They don’t talk about it, the way they don’t talk about it when Bev sleeps in Richie’s room or when Ben needs to be told that he’s wanted. All things they don’t talk about. 

Richie wonders who does these things for Mike or Bill. If Stan had that. If Eddie did. 

“I’m gay,” he says, because he hasn’t really yet, to Mike and Bill. Bev did, a couple of months ago, in the group chat. She called herself a lesbian and Ben had hugged her when she needed it. He brushes his thumb over Richie’s knuckles now. 

“Thank you for telling us,” Mike says and Richie hates the eye contact that he makes, but forces himself to maintain it. 

“I’m bisexual,” Bill says like it’s nothing. Maybe it is for him. 

“I’m gay,” Mike shrugs. 

“Why didn’t you guys say anything when I came out!?” Bev asks, excited. Richie feels a little shell shocked. 

Ben clears his throat and says, before Mike or Bill can reply, “I’m uh, also queer.” 

Richie lets go of his hand and rubs his own thighs with sweaty palms. He’s tense, his stomach in tight knots. He takes a gulp of his soda and wishes it was whiskey. 

“What’s in the water up in Derry, huh?” Richie tries to joke, but his voice waivers.

He can’t look at Ben at all. He was safe to touch and now Richie doesn’t know anymore. 

“I didn’t say anything before because I didn’t want to take away from your moment, Bev,” Mike says, patting her wrist. He looks at her with such soft, fond eyes and Richie’s chest swells with warmth and love. 

“But fuck me though, right?” He laughs so they know he’s kidding. Ben chuckles first and reaches out to slot their hands together on the table, but Richie moves his back into his lap. 

“I love you guys,” Bev tells them. Her eyes are wet. They’ve all spent so much time crying and holding their breath. Bev breathes out and wipes her eyes. 

“We love you, too,” Ben says and his voice sounds rough. 

Mike stays in Bev’s room and Bev bunks with Richie. They curl towards each other like parentheses. 

“How are we all… like this? How is that possible?” He whispers, almost hoping Bev is already asleep. 

No such luck. She opens her eyes and says, “Birds of a feather, I guess.” 

“Do you think-” Richie tries to say but his throat closes around the words. “That Eddie...?” 

Bev’s eyes are sad when she touches her small hand to his face in the dark. “I don’t know,” she says. “I don’t think we ever will, honey.” 

Richie doesn’t mean to cry, but he does. He cries and when he’s done, Bev wipes his tears with her thumbs and Richie exhales heavily into the space between them.

“We have to move on,” she says, to him but also to herself. Richie nods, because he knows. 

They fall asleep and in the morning, Ben is making pancakes when they stumble into the kitchen together. 

Mike, Bev, and Richie eat pancakes and drink coffee for breakfast. Ben has an apple and yogurt. 

“Here,” Richie spears a sugary maple syrup drenched slice of pancake with his fork. He holds it out to Ben, hovering over his mouth. 

“Richie-” 

“You made it, you should get to taste it!” Richie insists, and Ben looks at him like he has five heads instead of just a five-head. Richie wiggles the fork and Ben rolls his eyes but opens his mouth. 

Richie blinks, thrown for a loop. He had expected Ben to take the fork. Richie swallows hard and feeds the pancake to Ben, who wraps his hand around Richie’s to steady it. 

“See!” Richie says, too loud. “So good!” 

Ben smiles and thanks him, turning back to his sad, unflavored yogurt. Bev raises an eyebrow at Richie and Mike smirks like an asshole. He loves these people but right now he wants to murder them all and then himself. He flushes a bright and furious red. 

“Are you feeling okay, Rich?” Ben asks, and Mike laughs. 

“Right as rain,” he says, shoving such a large fork full of pancakes his mouth that his cheeks puff out. 

Bev rolls her eyes, but starts asking Mike about his plans for the rest of his trip. 

After breakfast, Ben goes for a run and Richie waits with Bev and Mike for him to return. 

** 

Ben holds Richie’s hand after Mike leaves, curling his fingers into Richie’s palm while they’re watching a Netflix special. Bev has long since gone to bed, and Bill asking about his stand up has him curious about what other comedians have been doing since he’s been away. 

Ben holds his hand and this time, Richie doesn’t pull away. He thinks maybe they should talk about the hand holding, even though they haven’t been. He feels differently about it now than he did before Ben came out. 

Richie wants to know why he waited so long to tell him, but he doesn’t want to answer that same question himself, so he doesn’t ask. Instead he curls his fingers over Ben’s pointedly and asks, “Are you doing this for me?” even though he is terrified of the answer. 

Ben furrows his brow, his goatee framing his pursed lips. Richie has never kissed anyone with facial hair before and he wonders how it feels. He immediately feels guilty, gut churning at the thought of kissing Ben. 

“I’m doing it for me.” Ben says this like Richie should have already known. “I like holding your hand.” 

Hearing Ben say it out loud makes Richie blush like he had at breakfast the other day and he tries to hide it by turning his face in his shoulder. 

“Okay,” Richie says. Ben smiles and he looks so good, Richie wonders if maybe he’s still in the Deadlights and he’s being shown something he wants and not something that’s real. 

Ben chuckles at the comedian on TV, but Richie is too lost in his own head, not really paying attention. Ben is solid next to him, warm. 

Richie didn’t know that he would ever feel warm like this again, after Derry. He wasn’t sure he’d remember how. 

He thinks maybe Ben understands. 

** 

Ben kisses Richie after breakfast a year and a half after Derry. 

He tastes like coffee and Richie feels light headed when he pulls away. The three of them, Bev and Ben and Richie, all had waffles that Ben made with a fruit salad. He skips his morning run and kisses Richie instead. 

“Oh,” Richie says, “Oh, Benny Boy.” He touches his own lips, checking to make sure they’re still there. 

“Was that okay?” Ben asks, because he’s a good person, the best person, and Richie wraps an arm around his shoulders, drawing him in close. 

“That was truly life affirming,” Richie says, dramatically as he dares. He swoons and Ben catches him in his arms. Richie is bigger than Ben but certainly not stronger, so it’s a smooth transition from standing to being cradled with his hand slapped over his forehead theatrically. “Do it again,” he tells Ben, who laughs and complies. 

They make out against the counter, next to the coffee pot, and only stop when Bev comes back into the room, ready for work and about to walk out the door. She smiles at them, and Richie loves her so much that he feels his chest crack in half, but in the best possible way. He looks at Ben and feels the same. Thinks about Mike and Bill too. Eddie and Stan. He loves them so much that he’s grinning like a loon. Ben’s arms tighten around him and he thinks that the way he loves him is just a little different than everyone else. 

“I like you an awful lot, Ben Hanscom,” Richie says, quiet. He hears Bev behind him getting her travel mug ready for the day. 

“I like you too, Richie Tozier,” Ben touches his face and Richie touches his. 

“I’m leaving now,” Bev says from the doorway. Richie looks up at her. She has her mug in one hand and her phone in the other. “For work. Which you also have today, Ben.” 

“I know,” Ben replies, but doesn’t look away from Richie. 

Bev winks at him and waves. He waves back, pulling his hand from Ben’s cheek just long enough. Bev clicks the door shut behind her. 

When Richie looks back, Ben has tears in his eyes and Richie wipes them away. Ben has to tilt his head up, slightly, to look into Richie’s eyes and when he does, he breathes out through his nose and smiles.


End file.
